What's the story?

I will contend that videogame writing is probably as difficult as other mediums to write for. In some ways moreso. Now I’m not saying that videogame writers are on any level of writing skill such as those of William Shakespeare or other classic literary writers, no, however I think that writing a story, well a good story for a videogame requires more skill and knowledge than one would think. It’s very simple and easy to craft a scenario for a videogame; but it is vastly more difficult to successfully execute that scenario and evoke the intended emotions and responses than books or film would. Videogames have an element that those other forms of media simply do not have. It is from that where it becomes more difficult. Videogames have an element of interaction that is simply not present in other forms of storytelling. In videogames, the player becomes the character. We assume the role of that person. We are not simply onlookers of the events unfolding, we allow the events to unfold itself. That is why it’s difficult for story writers to craft good videogame stories that stick with us. The ever present challenge is finding the balance. Allow the player to dictate the story so that we feel as if the world is alive and that we can mold and shape it and feel part of it and not realize we are simply moving along a set path that an invisible puppeteer is subtly leading us, yet at the same time not throwing us out there into a vast, soulless world completely devoid of any structure so much to the point that plot is nearly nonexistent, giving the player little reason to care.

"Oh God, why couldn't I just work at Team Ninja? They don't bother with this story business.

More than ever, technology has allowed for more interaction and larger, more complex tales. After all, it’s hard to find any game that has little reliance on story, even simple platformers such as Super Mario. Yet a lot of these stories don’t resonate as well with people as some of the games that many fans consider classics. A good example is the often debated JRPG genre. Many contend that the reason JRPGs aren’t fun anymore is because they have become stagnant; that they lack fresh ideas. However, fans continue to flock to The Legend of Zelda every time despite knowing how the story will unfold. Technology has allowed for larger stories, with voice acting to convey emotion on the screen yet the Final Fantasy debate rages on to this day about which one is better; many debate the old 16 bit games are the best ever and swear by them despite new technology allowing for more advanced forms of story. The answer for this contrast is that all great game writers know how to best evoke emotion or a response out of a player within the context of game design irregardless of the technology available.

Want to know why many fans staunchly stand by the Final Fantasies of old? It’s the simple fact that they knew how to best evoke an emotion from the player. For all it’s simplicity, FF4 garners more respect among most gamers than say, FF13 because of this fact. Cecil didn’t simply become a Paladin via a cutscene, that task was delineated unto the player. The player had to discover for themselves the way to become a Paladin through brilliant game design. As a result, the emotion that Cecil elicits mirrors that of the player and we are able to connect with him more as a result. Its why many fans still jerk a tear at seeing Celes hurl herself off of a cliff despite being a pixilated sprite and not a detailed 3D model. Because the player worked to keep Cid alive. We had to actually fetch the fish ourselves. What served as a seemingly pointless minigame was actually used as an effective tool for storytelling that simply adding a cutscene wouldn’t have achieved. The Legend of Zelda continues to resonate with gamers despite recurring themes in every game; despite the fact that Link is a mute and none of the characters are able to deliver voice over’s to help convey the emotion. The game evokes the proper emotion of making you, the player feel like a legendary hero. The reason why people flock to games like Ocarina of Time and call it the greatest Zelda ever is in its realization that the best and most endearing videogame moments are the ones you do yourself. Link simply doesn’t just open the treasure chest, a sense of wonder and amazement is created as the music beautifully mimics the actions on screen and the glow of the chest and the gaze upon Link’s face as he slowly opens it up to reveal the contents inside before finally holding the item on high makes us feel as though we discovered something truly special. It’s why we feel more like a legendary hero when we get to the final area and save Hyrule. We led the princess to safety out of the castle. We defeated Ganon. Not the cutscene. Zelda games won’t win any awards for originality, but when it comes to evoking emotion within the player, they’re often masterpieces and its why Shigeru Miyamoto is such a well respected game designer. He understands and has always understood this fundamental concept of game design.

This is why Hideo Kojima is a well respected game designer and the Metal Gear franchise has the most die hard, loyal fans out of any stealth action game. Hideo Kojima is a master at evoking emotion within the player. We as players connect with Snake more than most videogame characters despite not even knowing his full real name or background. We experience key moments as Snake because we actually get to play those key character defining moments and the characters’ reactions to them. Liquid reminds Snake of the amount of men he’s killed at the end of his mission in MGS1 and it’s true. He’s also in turn reminding the player of the amount of men that’s been murdered and both Snake and the player each have an epiphany and realize they hadn’t really thought of it that way until now. It’s why the player is called upon to shoot The Boss instead of simply letting a cutscene handle it. It’s why the player is forced to mash the hell out of the buttons when Snake is crawling through the microwave tunnel at the end of part 4. These are all reasons we as players connect and understand Snake as a character far more than some bio or flashback cutscene telling us of his background could achieve.

Why can't more people get it like these guys do?

While technology has advanced videogames forward and allowed us more interactivity than ever before, sadly, the ways to effectively craft a meaningful, memorable tale using these new options has not. Many FPS games capture the intensity of being on a battlefield, but little else. They capture sounds and explosions and environments, but not the important stuff. They fail to capture any sense of loss. Often times your storyline buddies can’t die until the game dictates it. There’s never a moment of downtime in between the battles to take any of it in, to learn about the people you battle with, or to dread the next onslaught. Some games such as Heavy Rain have managed to merge technology with effective storytelling. Heavy Rain achieves suspense far more effectively than jump out scare games like Resident Evil ever could. The designers force the player to cut their finger off themselves rather than let a scene play out. There are real consequences to the player’s actions and when they die, it wasn’t the fact that they may have pressed the wrong button at the wrong time that bothers them, its more the fact that they made an error in judgment, the ultimate error resulting in death that has consequences that the player is forced to reflect upon. The story simply doesn’t end and allow the player to forget the erroneous decision. No. The player got that character killed and the story is now altered because of it. The player is forced to reflect and not pretend it didn’t happen and simply “reload.”

Videogames are the toughest style of storytelling there is. Not many have the ability to do it effectively, so my hats off to those game designers out there who have taken the time to truly make attempts to mesh technology with storytelling and make videogames a respectable means of storytelling comparable to books or film. I truly believe they can in their own way inspire us, make us cry, make us feel joy and enlighten us in ways that books or film simply cannot achieve.

Why Nintendo wins not just E3, but the industry itself.

To tell the truth, I hate this console generation. I really do. Never in my life have I felt so apathetic toward videogames. I’m not sure if that was due to just my own personal issues in life. And yes, while real life issues may have been somewhat the cause of it, I couldn’t help but feel as if there was perhaps something wrong with the industry itself. I saw no clear winner in the “console wars” in fact I couldn’t care less about dumb console wars, never have. It was all just laughable pointless bickering amongst fan boys each pimping their own merits of the console they bought failing to see any of its weaknesses or just flat refusing to accept them all together. They all sucked to me. They each had their problems and I just hated the direction the entire industry was going.

Until E3 this year.

E3 this year gave me a sense that maybe videogames aren’t moving in such a bad direction after all. Sadly, the only ones I saw an indication of good things to come from this year was Nintendo. But at least someone gets it. To tell truth, Nintendo has always gotten it for the most part. The only difference is that now, they’ve finally got some results to go along with their vision. Initially, back in 2006 I was contemplating on which console I should get first and my initial knee jerk reaction was to support the Wii. After a few months my interest waned. While Nintendo had the right mindset, sadly the industry wasn’t on board or catching up to them quite yet. My biggest problem with the Wii was that the only ones who cared about making products for it were Nintendo themselves. Everyone else saw its technology as nothing but a gimmick and dump their shovel ware titles and flood the system with it, not bothering to take care or interest in the design of the game itself. Nintendo sees the technology as more than a gimmick but rather a useful tool with which to design a good game around. The technology supports the game, not the game supporting the technology and that is the difference to me. However at this years E3 I finally got the sense from other developers in the industry that they too finally understand this concept. In short, the Wii has become more appealing to me because it finally looks to have some quality variety.

All of the greatest consoles in the short history of the industry have all had variety in games. That is the number 1 reason a console is successful. Nintendo showed me that they understand this concept. Emphasis was not placed on gimmickry, but rather on showcasing a variety of games that people want to play. The Super Nintendo, Playstation 1, the original NES, all of these had the most variety of good games for everyone’s tastes. That’s when I realized what I had been irritated with concerning this console generation. The sheer lack of variety games lacked anymore. Contrast the original Playstation with the Playstation 3. When comparing library of good, varied titles it puts the PS3 to shame. Sure the PS3 does hit the mark occasionally (Heavy Rain/Little Big Planet), but more often than not they’re simple rehashes or knock offs of other titles that don’t bother to utilize the power of the PS3 and are instead HD versions of games I already played on PS2. For example, I played about 3 stages of God of War III, realized it was just a goof in clashing red and white paint killing every damn thing on the screen, screaming about Zeus again (except this time its in HD!) and got bored with it.

I eventually settled on a PS3 in early 2008 after holding out for a long time after seeing no real reason to launch to the next generation. I was perfectly fine with my old PS2 and Game Cube. But eventually the fan boyish lure of Metal Gear Solid 4 finally enticed me to make the plunge because I felt it was the first game and still 2 years later one of the only games on that system to utilize the PS3 to its fullest. I chose the PS3 over the other two because I honestly felt it to have the most potential out of the three to deliver a truly next generation experience, and in some cases it does. However more often than not that is simply not the case. Most games don’t utilize the full resolution they’re capable of, Six Axis use is all but ignored, or at worst given applications that don’t have even a modicum of sense or purpose (Ninja Gaiden Sigma’s jiggling boobs comes to mind). PSN is a joke, lame avatars, no cross game chat, constant getting signed out of the network while you’re playing a game, freezing…of course a PS Plus membership might fix all that but screw you you’ve given me little reason to warrant a purchase in the first place.

I hate this console generation because more than ever game companies flat don’t get it. You want to know why Wii is outselling the market consistently? It’s not motion controls you damn fools. It’s the fact that Nintendo puts emphasis on games and product quality. Basically they view games as more important than the other two companies, because that’s all they do. It’s what they specialize in. Its not just another piece of the corporate pie. Now I’m not naïve enough to think that Nintendo isn’t just like any other business and doesn’t care about things like sales figures and marketing, but the difference with them is that that’s not just all they care about. Sony and Microsoft just flat don’t have a freakin’ clue and are painfully attempting to mimic the success of Nintendo rather than focus on their systems own merits. PS3 sadly sees Blu Ray capabilities as not a way to deliver a truly revolutionary game play experience, but rather as a way to sell some movies.

Microsoft was an even unbelievably bigger joke offering absolutely nothing of merit. You know when you open up a press conference showcasing two multiplatform games you know haven’t got anything to deliver but shit on a plate. Once again they’ve shown that Xbox 360 is almost all about guns and guns and blowing things up and in the case of Gears of War manages to fail on that front more than anything the PS3 has to offer with Killzone or Resistance. How fitting they end with the biggest joke of all the Kinect, a piece of hardware costing up to 150 dollars that allows you, yes you to bounce around like an idiot as long as you stand 6 feet away from the TV standing up. You know if you want to stand up and move around I have a better idea that doesn’t cost 150 smackers. It’s called go outside. Walk your dog, shoot some hoops, jog; you know, the old school way to exercise. You fools don’t have a damn clue, you never did and the only thing you’ve ever done is ride the coattails of Sony’s successes and mimic them. You suck and have been more harm than good the industry. Not that Sony is a whole lot better mind you. While on the handheld front, Nintendo delivers the promise of fresh revolutionary technology supported by a plethora of games each with variety, Sony delivers the promise of even more lame ad campaigns telling me about how games are “the bizness” instead of actually focusing on those games. I don’t care if my console does EVERYTHING when it excels at NOTHING. I just want a damn game to play and a variety of them.

But there is perhaps hope on the horizon. For the first time I’m seeing a clear “winner” of these companies. Finally the industry is on board with Nintendo’s vision. Nintendo has always had the right mindset, but needed industry backing to get there. I truly believe still that the PS3 has the capability to shine and deliver, but that’s all it is, potential. Potential never got anything anywhere. Being the most powerful dog in the yard doesn’t make it the best. No one still talks about 3DO despite it being amazing for it’s time after all. I’m holding out hope that Nintendo can make me enjoy the direction video games are headed. They’ve managed to accomplish one thing, they’ve at least made me feel hopeful for the future and that’s more than the other two have managed to accomplish in ten years.

Sony and Microsoft need to get on the ball.

I just finally watched all of the press conferences and to summarize, basically neither Microsoft or Sony get why Nintendo is getting all of the praise and are making fat profits. It's not stupid motion control gimmicks particularly its the fact that they promote games that people want to play. Games with variety, a little something for everyone. They had optimism, a sense of looking forward to the future.

Sony and Microsoft had guns, guns, and uh....GUNS. Oh and Marcus. Ugh.

Basically I felt that Nintendo is going places and it made me want to own a Wii and definitely a 3DS. For Sony and Microsoft it was just rehashing the same games they've already released or talking about new versions of them with another number tacked on. If it wasn't that it was promoting knock off software that Nintendo had already introduced 4 years ago.

In short, buisness as usual and that's why you two fail.

My crappy day.

This is nothing more than some random musings I felt the need to share as it was so bizarre I figured I would never experience anything like it again. Well, I hope not anyway. It just goes to show once you think you’ve seen it all in this world, you haven’t. If you’re queasy or sick to the stomach over hearing things that are kind of gross, read no further. Just a warning.

So I work in a local video store and it was a fairly slow morning and I decided to go up into the tape archive in the back where we keep the really old stuff and do some reorganizing/cleaning etc. since every so often a customer will go back there and check it out looking for older stuff. Well, as I was cleaning I couldn’t help but notice a particular odor. I raised my head and made sort of a face as it felt like a fairly distinct smell but I figured maybe it was just me and ignored it and continued my work. As I made my way down the rows making sure everything was in its proper place, that’s when the smell started to become more prominent. I became much more aware at this point and looked around and took a sniff. “What the…?” I thought to myself as the smell I picked up on felt something akin to a gas pipe that had been busted or something. That was my initial thought before I did a bit of poking around and I noticed a few movies had been shuffled out of place more than usual and I walked closer to get a better look. The strange smell had turned to a flat out disgusting stink at this point when I noticed a white paper towel balled up behind the shelf. I stupidly reached for it without thinking before seeing a dried brown turd wrapped up inside of it. It was oddly hot dog shaped and about as large. It took me a split second before I put 2 and 2 together and realized I had just touched a disgusting block of shit and nearly gagged as the disgusting stink had filled my nostrils.

Needless to say I ran to the back and quickly disposed of the paper towel with the offending substance inside and struggled to maintain my gag reflex as I tried to forget about the fact that I just grabbed a ball of shit. Not that I don’t have a strong stomach or anything (I agreed to help load some farm animals for the FFA club in high school as a favor to a friend years ago) but I guess the very idea that someone would be so disgusting as to stash their disgusting poop somewhere in a public place like that just made me wretch. I ended up having to remove every movie from the area and sanitize the damn thing and spray the hell out of it with disinfectant. I then rushed to the city dumpster in the back, threw all of the garbage away and some of the smell still lingered afterwards. The clean up process isn’t even finished yet. The most important thing I want to know is, was this some sort of prank or what? And if so, why in God’s name would you keep a dry turd around with you and stash it somewhere? I just don’t have an answer folks.

The moral of this story? Some people are fucking disgusting and you really have to wonder what their houses look like. How can people be so nasty like that?

Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker First Impressions

So I’ve logged about roughly 5 hours into Peace Walker and so far I haven’t enjoyed a Metal Gear this much since Snake Eater, in fact this game seems to ignore the oft maligned (and rightly so) Portable Ops and picks up right where Snake Eater left off in terms of story. This time they got the play control down right. At first it seemed a tad bit confusing but now things seem second nature and within about 30 minutes I was sneaking around like a pro. Thankfully Kojima and his team seem to have taken a few lessons they learned from the new play control schematic in MGS4 and applied to Peace Walker, while at the same time addressing some of the more annoying points from that game. Seriously, who ever thought being forced to shoot a ton of Bob-Ombs in Chapter 4 for the whole damn level would be fun should be kicked in the nuts.
However, thanks to the PSPs simplified controller, you can’t do as much in terms of moves and stealth options but the game more than makes up for it with it’s almost RPG like item management component. Assigning members to various positions and outfitting them with various weaponry and gear and training them so they gain experience in target practice modes is extraordinarily fun. Essentially, this is the first real game to capture the Metal Gear experience on the go and its perfect for on the go play as the story is divided up into short, but plentiful missions while the story provides just enough for those who don’t want to get wrapped up in lengthy 30 minute long conversations, but still extensive enough to provide lots of background info for those who want to learn a bit more about the game’s world and characters in the form of briefing files that can be played at any time before the mission. There’s something for everyone here and so far its quickly becoming my favorite PSP game ever.




In other unrelated news, any action movie fan should definitely check out From Paris With Love, I was pleasantly surprised; it’s a good decent action flick that doesn’t try to dazzle with special effects or show copious amounts of blood/sex to get attention. It’s a nice throwback to action films of old with solid pacing and a decent cast. One of Travolta’s better films in a while.

Metal Gear Solid Perfect Walker?!

Well, about a week away from Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker and I flat out cannot wait. I’ve played through the demo over quite a few times and from what I can tell the game looks uh, solid, no pun intended. But what really has me intrigued is the fact that apparently Famitsu thought well enough of the game to grant it a perfect 40/40 score. That makes Peace Walker only the 14th game and only the 3rd handheld title to garner such an accolade in the magazine’s 20+ year history. That would seem like a remarkable feat, however, a total of eight of those scores came within the past 2 years or so. My question then is, has Famitsu just flat lowered it’s standards or are these games just that good? My personal perspective rests far more closely with the former than the latter. It really started with Nintendogs in 2005. Really Famitsu? A perfect score? So you mean to tell me that its better than classics like Super Mario 64, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Metal Gear Solid 3? Really Famitsu? Let’s take a look at these eight “classics” Famitsu claims to purport are classics since 2008.

1. Super Smash Brothers Brawl: Are you kidding me? This was fun but please. This game was nothing more than fan service masquerading as a fighting game. Calling this a perfect game does a disservice to other fighting games and just flat slaps them in their collective faces.

2. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: Okay, this one I can’t really argue with too much.

3. 428: Never played it so I can’t comment.

4. Dragon Quest IX: Again, have yet to play it but if Dragon Quest VIII couldn’t make the cut I can only imagine what this game did that was so different.

5. Monster Hunter Tri: Monster Hunter is fun but is it perfect? Hardly.

6. Bayonetta: Again, good game but the plot left a little to be desired to say the least.

7. New Super Mario Bros. Wii: What? But no Super Mario 64? It only revolutionized 3D gaming as we know it today, but who’s counting right?

And finally here we are at Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. And I would love to believe that the game earned that perfect 40/40 that has eluded many a fantastic game over the years but given the apparent bar being lowered from one of the most respected magazines in Japan over the past few years, it feels so much like a tainted victory to me.

But one thing is for sure, it will be awesome and I can’t wait for June 8th.